The most consequential election of our lifetime is just around the corner. Free and fair elections in Wisconsin, a cornerstone of freedom, are in jeopardy at the hands of the political parties, the media, and the pollsters. The truth bears repeating.
The Marquette Law School poll is meaningless
We are inundated daily with polls intended to prepare us for election results our judgment would tell us are inconceivable. On September 11, Charles Franklin, Director of the Marquette Law School Poll, released the latest results which suggest that Kamala Harris is pulling ahead of Donald Trump in Wisconsin. He knowingly shapes the expectations of Wisconsin voters with meaningless data and is well aware the dishonest media will use the results to push false narratives. The poll is deeply flawed by its sample size, selection methodology, and lack of any meaningful discussion of its limitations or its findings.
The latest poll has Harris at 52% and Trump at 48% for both registered and likely voters. The total sample was 822 registered voters with a 4.6% margin of error. With this large margin of error, either candidate may be ahead.
Respondents in the Marquette poll identify the economy as their most important issue by far, consistent with the rest of the country. When voters are surveyed nationwide about which presidential candidate is better on the economy Trump has a large lead over Harris. Nationally, in the latest Pew Research, 23% rate the economy as excellent or good and 77% rate the economy as fair or poor. In the Marquette poll, 55% of respondents report they are just getting by or struggling.
Last Sunday, Charles Franklin appeared on UpFront, a weekly program on WISN TV out of Milwaukee. He described Harris’s lead as a “smidge of an increase.” When asked about the economy ranking as the top issue for 41% of respondents, he described it as a “strong suit” of Trump’s and a “weak suit” of Harris’s.
When pressed about the polling errors of 2016 and 2020, which were unrealistically optimistic for Democrats, Franklin responded this is “correct on average”. He went on to concede that the current poll result may be overly optimistic for Democrats and pessimistic for Trump. The 2020 polling was too low for Trump by 4 points. Franklin concluded his interview by saying the polls may “give us some guidance” but no one believes they are “exact predictions.” These disclaimers and others should be included prominently in all poll reporting, though if that level of truth telling was included, there’d be no point in publishing the poll.
Wisconsin would never elect the real Kamala Harris
Harris understands this and her campaign strategy is to try to deceive the voters about who she is and how she will govern. She is trying to limp across the finish line on lies, platitudes and practiced lines. The contempt she conveys for American voters by trying to prevent them from evaluating the real Kamala Harris is beyond despicable.
This month Harris finally sat for an unscripted solo interview with a local Philadelphia television anchor and it reinforced why her handlers are trying to keep her on script. In response to being asked to tell the people one or two specifics about how she would make life more affordable, she went off for 4 minutes on the rambling nothingness she has become known for and many have dubbed “word salad.” In summary, she described herself as “a new generation of leadership” whose “opportunity economy” will “invest in areas that need a lot of work” with “new ideas and policies directed at the current moment.”
Kamala Harris has a 20-year track record in public life during which she has consistently embraced extreme liberal ideology. There is a good reason the liberal extremists in her party are maintaining their silence now as she reverses her positions on policies they champion while she campaigns. They know she is lying and so do we.
Election cheating is inevitable
The Wisconsin Election system has serious, well-documented vulnerabilities that make it a target for those who will cheat to win. Legislators have refused to correct the problems despite the demands of their constituents, and the media have not only shunned their duty to investigate and report but also belittled those who are concerned about election integrity as “election deniers” and “conspiracy theorists.”
There are 4 million ineligible voter names maintained by the Wisconsin Elections Commission on the registered voters list providing a rich reservoir for sophisticated hackers. The 250,000 driver’s licenses that have been issued to non-citizens who are here legally are indistinguishable from citizen licenses and could easily be used for voter registration and day of election voter ID. These and other vulnerabilities make our elections unverifiable. The margin in the last presidential election was just 20,000 votes. Wisconsin voters are going to be put in the position of being unable to believe our election results, particularly if they are close.
Hacking has become commonplace throughout the world. The Department of Justice has warned that foreign governments and domestic cybercriminals are targeting our election.
Last month, Politico was one of the few media outlets that reported on an annual conference held in Las Vegas over a weekend called the DEF CON “Voting Village” Hacking Event. At this event, the best hackers in the world gathered with Secretaries of State and other election officials to help them identify and fix voting machine vulnerabilities. Conference organizers reported multiple pages of vulnerabilities. They stressed that there is not time to correct deficiencies prior to the November election.
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has posted all of the data breaches reported by Wisconsin companies since 2012 online. In 2024 to date there have been 7 companies listed including Ascension Health, AT&T and Power Test. There were 10 in 2023. Millions of clients have had their personal information stolen through hacking, including their social security numbers.
Statista, a global data and business intelligence company, reported that in 2023 there were 3,205 organizations with data breaches in the United States with more than 353 million individuals impacted. In each case “sensitive data is accessed by an unauthorized threat actor.”
No honest person would seriously argue that our November election is secure.
The media remains the greatest threat to our freedom
Last Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS) filled a half page with an article entitled “How do we Respond to Election Theories?.” Citing so-called “extremism experts” the article was a primer on how people should handle the “conspiracy theorists” in their orbit.
The article counsels the reader not to mock or challenge the misguided. Rather, “understanding why people fall for conspiracy theories is the first step toward fostering respectful conversation and inoculating people against believing a conspiracy theory in the future.”
The article explains the “science” behind why people buy into election integrity concerns, referred to as “conspiracy theories.” They are, according to the “scientists,” trying to make sense of an uncertain world, needing to feel safe and secure when they feel powerless, needing someone to blame, or needing to have access to exclusive information to make them feel superior.
The article concludes with a list of suggestions for talking to “theory believers.” The JS has a long history of dishonest reporting and political bias so it is no surprise they have shunned their responsibility to investigate and report real issues in favor of this garbage.
As early voting gets underway, the threats to a free and fair election are real. Those who are determined to cheat are fully prepared to exploit them. Our eyes are wide open. We know what we are up against. The path to a Donald Trump victory is overwhelming the cheating with massive voter turnout – so let’s get out and vote.
